Teacher wants consequences for false allegations

An Ontario teacher who had a terrible experience after a student and his parent complained about her conduct is calling for consequences for false accusations.

“Something is terribly wrong here,” Susan Dowell told the CBC’s Kathy Tomlinson. “Children who do make false allegations – parents who make false allegations – what happens to them in the end?”

Dowell, a substitute teacher, was investigated after a student told his parents that she had forced him to eat garbage. In fact, Dowell said she had scolded the Grade 5 boy for discarding an uneaten banana at lunch.

“I told him to eat it . . . or put it back in his lunch box and take it home. His parents paid good money for fruit like that for him to eat,” she’s quoted as saying.

But the parent told the principal that she had forced the boy to dig through the garbage and take out a squishy banana, which humiliated him in front of his friends. Shockingly, this prompted an investigation by the Ontario Children’s Aid Society.